by Maia Starr
“How?” I asked.
She smiled. “I could cry.”
The statement made me burst into a hard laugh. “That would do it.” I thought about it. She really could manipulate me, but I wouldn’t give in unless I was getting something in return. “Fine.”
“Really?” she sprouted.
“On one condition,” I said, getting up and walking over to her. I took her hands into mine. “I want you.”
Her face was expressionless as she asked, deathly quiet, “Now?”
“When I come back,” I said. “I want you to be mine.”
She laughed and shook her head, pulling her hands away. “When you’re Dendren.”
“No,” I warned. “When I come back.”
“Your father won’t allow it,” she said with a shrug. “No.”
“Then there’s no deal,” I said and then felt strangely hurt by her coldness: her willingness to say no. “Don’t you want me?”
She raised a brow as though she’d never considered it before, which only made me feel even more furious.
“Of course,” she said.
“Then… what?”
“My position is…” she rolled her wrist. “Complicated. But when you’re Dendren, we can do what we like,” she tried to say, but I wasn’t convinced. Even if my father died, I would still have to wait for my brother Fenris to take the throne.
Then suddenly she kissed me: our lips dancing together in the way I had always dreamed they would. She reached down and grabbed the hardness that was pressing and twitching against my nightclothes, warm under her palm.
“Your father can’t know,” she said finally, pulling away from my mouth. “Do we have a deal?”
“We have a deal,” I said.
I smiled.
My life was not all that impressive. I was a strong warrior, sure. I’d helped invade some of the most death-defying terrains. I had helped lead an expedition to new areas of Cadir: found a hidden offshoot of our people that helped us procreate when our species was dying off.
But most of my nights were spent alone. My mother died, my father had no interest in me, and my relationship with Fenris was beyond uncongenial since he’d taken a lover.
I was alone.
Until now.
Chapter Three
Chloe
We finally arrived in Cadir, our ship thudding against the green ground with a slight scrape. Harper loved making an entrance with her landing, never mind what it was doing to the integrity of our ship.
I licked my dry lips and found a mirror, coming out of my deep sleep. I made a vain attempt to brush my dark red curls and brushed my coated lashed up with my fingertips, trying desperately to look awake.
I could already hear our diplomat being greeted by the foreign minister of the dragon shifter planet.
With a deep sigh, I brushed down my spacesuit and made my way to the outside.
There, a tall man with a square face and broad shoulders stood, shaking the hand of our diplomat: a gruff soldier named Warren.
“This is the Manaxula district,” the shifter said.
“You must be Illox,” Warren said.
The man shook his head and corrected, “Actually, there was a slight change of plans, but I am here to greet you to Cadir. My name is Scashra, son of the Dendren.”
“Then we are honored,” Warren said, stepping out further into the massive landscape.
To my surprise, Cadir was intensely beautiful.
There were islands in the sky, all vertical from one another like a caste system: some just floating there while others were held up by tiny stems that hardly seemed strong enough to withstand a gust of wind, let alone sustain a cityscape.
The floating islands were called plenks, and there was a mass of glass buildings like mountains on each one.
I looked over the shifter. He was built solid and had tight, dark charcoal armor coating his entire body. He had curly, dark brown hair. Nearly black. He brushed it behind his ears and looked up at me as soon as I emerged from the shuttle with a loud swallow.
The look he was giving me made my stomach flip.
“Welcome,” he said, looking up at me.
I nodded and looked him over. There were dark scale marks that dotted down his temples and jawline, accentuating his masculine features.
Though Warren spoke to him, Scashra moved past him and over to me, guiding my hand down the shuttle staircase onto the warm planet.
“Wow,” I said, slipping my hand out from his and getting a better view of the landscape.
“We are very proud of what we’ve created here on Cadir,” he said evenly, never taking his intense hazel eyes off of me. “We hope you are comfortable here.”
“We are so thankful to meet you,” Warren rattled off. “The bonds we create here we hope will last a lifetime.”
“Likewise,” Scashra nodded regally.
The crew descended from the ship, each meeting up with a Parduss greeter. After some pleasantries were exchanged, we were given a brief tour of the lands and were told about the different tiers of the plenks.
Eventually, the breeders were asked to separate into a group so the Parduss could begin splitting us up, assigning the breeders to whomever they deemed special enough to screw a human.
“The breeders will stay here with us before being taken back to Renden, where my father lives,” Scashra said, walking ahead with Warren.
“And us?” Warren asked, turning back to me briefly.
“You’ll go meet the king today,” he said. “He will give you an assignment, and you’ll convene with the rest of your group in a few days’ time when they return to Renden.”
“But you’ll be holding them back?” Warren asked hesitantly. “The breeders?”
“That’s right,” Scashra said confidently.
I could tell Warren didn’t like the idea, mostly because I didn’t like the idea and we were usually on the same page about things like this. We had brought a security crew specifically to take care of the girls assigned to breed, and now he wanted to separate us?
Then Warren suddenly turned to me with concern. I hadn’t heard what they were saying, but quickly caught on when Warren turned back to the deep navy-scaled Parduss and said, “Sir, she’s part of the science expedition, not a breeder.”
“What class?” Scashra asked.
“Biology,” Warren said, scratching the side of his eye unsurely.
“We’d prefer if she stayed,” the Parduss said firmly. “This way we’ll have someone besides a breeder to confer with.”
“I could stay,” Warren said, likely wanting to tell the man that as the diplomat, it was actually his job to stay. Not mine. “If you like.”
Scashra looked at me and drew out a long finger in my direction. “Her.”
Warren exhaled unsurely and gave a nod. I walked up next to him as the Parduss joined the rest of his men and began to speak another language to them. I bit my lip, and Warren leaned in close to my face.
“Might be good to stay and keep an eye on the girls,” he offered with a shrug. Then he looked down at one of the communication devices he had on his belt and quickly hooked it to mine. “Now you’ll be able to get in touch in case anything bad happens.”
I nodded. “Alright,” I said. “I’ll oversee the girls until we reconvene.”
“You’re okay with that?” he asked, setting a thick, calloused hand on my shoulder.
I nodded.
Our crew met with the Parduss and his associates: tall men with broad shoulders, all with highly angular faces and deep, intense eyes. Scales lined the sides of their arms, but beyond the scarce scales that dotted their jawlines, there was no trace of them being otherworldly.
Harper made her way up to me and grabbed my hand, squeezing it.
“I’m not really fond of this,” she said, hurrying her words as we could both tell from the atmosphere that they were getting ready to separate us.
I swallowed hard and tried to force a smile.
>
“Boss’ orders,” I shrugged.
“They’re leaving the girls alone,” she whispered quickly and then pressed her finger into my chest. “Correction, they’re taking the girls and a member of the science team and separating the rest.”
“Geez, I thought I was suspicious,” I teased.
Her thin brows cupped into a U shape and she looked back over at the group of our people, huddling together with the Parduss and slowly saying their goodbyes.
Our resident cyborg, Adrius, had wandered up to us. He had a shaved head and a clean, smooth face. His eyes were round and vacant, despite how large they were. “To be fair, they are not rushing you off, ma’am. They are trying to get the process moving along, and it is you, in fact, who is holding them up,” he rattled off.
Harper laughed and pulled her blonde hair up into a ponytail: the heat already affecting us. “Whose side are you on, anyway?” she jeered, nudging him.
“It’s fine, okay?” I said. “I can handle it. I’ve got my gun, my transmitter. I’m good.”
Harper rolled her eyes and started marching with me up to the rest of the crowd. “Suddenly she’s good,” she said incredulously to Adrius.
“We’ll see each other in a few days,” I reassured her.
She looked at me seriously, tensely, and then threw her arms around me. “Okay,” she said, squeezing me before pulling out of the embrace. “Be safe. I’ll see you in a few days, alright?”
I nodded.
“And Chloe?”
My brows perked at her request, and she said, “Give ‘em shit.”
I laughed. “You got it.”
With that, myself and the breeders watched as the girls were flown up to the next plenk, an even bigger landmass than ours.
The navy-scaled shifter walked alongside me as we made our way to the far side of the island to where we would be staying.
Massive waterfalls gathered at the sides of the cliffs and spilled over the edge into the mysterious below. I didn’t know where the water was coming from, but it was absolutely beautiful.
“How does that work?” I asked, and the navy shifter slowed his pace, falling back as the rest of his associates kept walking with the girls.
The man cocked a brow and followed the direction of my finger to the gushing waterfalls.
“There’s no lakes above us and no landmasses around. We’re floating in mid-air. Where does the water come from?”
The man smirked and pointed skyward to the island above us. “The plenk above us,” he explained. “We’re on the lowest plenk: all the water spills from one to the other.”
“Ah,” I said, shielding my eyes from the hot sun as I looked up. Now that he said it, I could see the streams of water falling from one island to the opposite side of this one. “What supplies the plenk at the top?”
“The mainlands,” he said, as though I had any idea what that meant.
I blinked and offered him a smile. “I didn’t know there were mainlands,” I said.
He shrugged. “We only go there to hunt. It’s too dangerous otherwise.”
A thick swallow went down my throat as I thought about what that sentence truly meant. Here we were, dealing with half dragon people, and there was something bad enough for them to be afraid of in the mainlands?
In truth, I wasn’t sure if the thought made me shiver or want to laugh. Clearly, we had no idea what we’d gotten ourselves into here.
I must have been making a face because the shifter smiled at me and let out a stifled laugh.
“What?” he asked.
“Just… if there’s something a giant Parduss would deem dangerous, then I should probably be scared. What the hell could possibly be out there that’s bigger than you?”
He shrugged. “You don’t have to be large to be dangerous.”
“Oh yeah?” My interest was piqued. “Then what’s out there?”
“That’s…” he said and then stalled. The shifter brushed the black strands from his face and grinned at me: a toothy smile that was as handsome as it was teasing.
My face flushed as I caught myself staring at him and I immediately became annoyed.
“That’s what you’ll be studying,” he finally finished with a laugh.
“Right,” I said with a tense nod. “Feeding us to the monsters, already. Here I thought we’d at least last a week before we started turning on each other.”
He smiled at my comment, watching me carefully, almost transfixed, but said nothing.
We were brought to a large, square building that looked like an ancient dungeon made high-tech. There were transportation pods instead of elevators and wide, ominous double doors, and sky walkways leading from one spire to another in the steel-looking building.
We were hurried into the building, one by one in single file and we all made our way into the dungeon-type rooms.
I waited with bated breath as I watched the girls depart from me, waiting to be chosen or sold off by the Parduss to start the breeding process.
As we walked, I began to wonder what that must have felt like for them. To know that soon they would not only be sleeping with a stranger, but a completely different species. I wondered if they could possibly get any pleasure from it, if they would be taken out to dinner or some such thing first or if it was more of an obligatory duty for both of the participants.
“This is looking more and more ominous,” I said to Scashra.
“Yep,” he said, walking steadily ahead of me down the echoing halls.
“Oh,” I said, unimpressed. “That’s it?” I laughed. “No comfort. Just, yep?”
The shifter led me down a hall that had a row of three bedrooms on either side. I peered into one of the larger ones and stepped in. It was literally just a bed and a pod that I was told was to remove dirt and disease, kind of like a shower without the water.
Scashra closed the door behind him, stepping into my room with me and clicking the lock over.
I swallowed and spun on my heel, looking at him nervously.
“I’m not a breeder,” I warned.
“I know,” he said and gave me a strange stare that made my heart speed up.
“And I have a coms,” I said, clutching the communication device in my hand.
The shifter looked down at my hand and then met my eyes again, a daring smile darkening across his lips. Before I had time to click the panic alarm on the device, he was vaulting toward me, throwing me against the wall and scraping my hand with his sharp nails until I dropped the coms to the ground.
With a single step he crushed the device under his thick boot and used his free hand to hold me against the cold wall.
“Oops,” he said with a child’s shrug.
My heart was racing now: my body and hand buzzing from the sudden attack.
“This isn’t a visitor’s center, is it?” I managed to say.
His hand was pressed fully against my chest, holding me firmly against the wall. He shook his head once and in a high-pitch tone he corrected, “No, it is.” Then his voice returned to his low gravel as he finished, “Not that you’ll benefit from it.”
“We’re…prisoners?” I guessed.
“Just segregated,” he said. “For now, like I said. You’ll meet them again.”
“Then why am I getting the distinct feeling we just became prisoners?”
He laughed. “Because you’re wildly paranoid. But, that’s alright, Chloe,” he breathed my name out. “I don’t trust you either.”
“Clearly,” I looked down at my broken coms and grit my teeth at him. “And the science team?”
His words were betraying his actions. We were never told of any segregation happening. My gut was telling me something was way off here, but I couldn’t pinpoint why. Was he going to kill them and keep the breeders?
“They’ll be fine,” he confirmed. “We just need to keep an eye on you for now.”
“In cells?” I snapped.
“Whatever keeps you under our watch,” he said.
>
I shook my head. “Bullshit. We were never told about any of this. We’re supposed to be with each other, under our own security watch!” My body pleaded with me not to say anything else, but I couldn’t seem to help myself. I needed to know what would happen to them.
“And what about the girls? Are they going to be taken advantage of?” I asked.
The shifter narrowed his brows and his head pushed forward as though he were processing my question. Then he looked over at me, seeming offended. “What?” he asked.
“Used!” I shouted, pushing his hand off of me. “Against their will! Raped!”
He looked disgusted.
“What?” he exclaimed. “No!”
Oh, that he finds appalling.
So… was he going to kill us all? What other reason did he have to keep us? He took a breath to speak, but I quickly announced, “Are you going to use us as some kind of ransom? Well, guess what! I’d rather hang myself than be ransomed off to the SAEW!”
The shifter blinked, taken aback by my sudden yelling, and then he laughed into his hand.
Shaking his head, he said, “You have quite the mouth on you.”
He was so calm that I started shaking. They’d planned this all along. I was right not to trust these sons of bitches, and now here I was, just like Alecia. Captured. Helpless.
I was furious with myself for ever doing this. I could feel my whole body shaking.
The shifter went to leave and then suddenly stopped, turning on his heel to look at me in the same fascinated way he had since we first met. “You would really rather die?”
I gritted my teeth but didn’t respond. He waited there for what felt like forever for my response, but I was done trying to reason with these monsters. I pressed my back against the wall and slid down until I was on my butt, knees up.
“What, you’re done talking now?” he asked with a bemused annoyance.
I stayed silent, wrapping my arms around my legs and resting my chin stubbornly on my knees. I could tell it was killing him that I wouldn’t answer.
With a sigh, he said, “We’re not killing you guys, and we’re not taking advantage of you. We’re just holding you here for a while.”
Silence.
“You really don’t want to know why?” he asked, irritated with me.